March 17, 2006
Senate Approves Budget, Breaking Spending Limits
By CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON, March 16 — The Senate narrowly approved a $2.8 trillion election-year budget Thursday that broke spending limits only hours after it increased federal borrowing power to avert a government default.

The budget decision at the end of a marathon day of voting followed a separate 52-to-48 Senate vote to increase the federal debt limit by $781 billion, bringing the debt ceiling to nearly $9 trillion. The move left Democrats attacking President Bush and Congressional Republicans for piling up record debt in their years in power.

Despite calls by Republican deficit hawks to hold the line, Senate Republicans joined with Democrats to approve more than $16 billion in added spending for social, military, job safety and home-heating programs, exceeding a ceiling established by President Bush.

In separate action, the House advanced $92 billion in war spending and hurricane recovery money.

Even with the added money, the Senate approved the $2.8 trillion budget by only 51 to 49 with five Republicans defecting. Senator Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana was the sole Democrat to back the budget after winning agreement for a new $10 billion effort for levee rebuilding and coastal protection to be paid for out of oil royalties and other sources. Her vote saved Vice President Dick Cheney from having to break a tie.

The White House and Senate Republican leaders sought to put the best face on the budget outcome, with Joshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget, crediting Republicans for "navigating difficult waters" in winning approval. Mr. Bolten said the administration would work to eliminate the added spending and restore the benefit cuts sought by the White House.

The successful push for additional spending alarmed and frustrated conservative Republicans who have been trying to steer the party back to a course of more fiscal restraint.

"It is very disturbing, and it gives me a whole lot of heartburn," said Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, who attributed the additional spending to political anxiety. "They want to go and say they are helping people, but we are not helping people when we are selling out their future."

In the House, lawmakers easily approved almost $92 billion in emergency spending, with about $68 billion going for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and $19 billion for hurricane recovery, slightly less than the White House sought.

The House and the Senate then left for a weeklong break.

The Senate budget bill would clear the way to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, but the outlook for that provision is uncertain given strong resistance by Republican moderates in the House and a long legislative route before final approval.

The budget fight and the focus on the rising national debt proved uncomfortable for some Republicans, who instead of tightening the federal belt found themselves caught in a Senate rush to add spending after raising the federal debt ceiling for the fourth time in five years.

"This budget could be the final nail in our coffin, if we don't watch it," said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who said the Republican spending pattern was demoralizing party voters. "I don't think we properly understand the keys to our electoral success."

But Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who led the push for $7 billion in extra money for health and education programs, said those areas had been starved for money in recent years and could not afford to be overlooked again.

"Health and education are the two major capital assets of this country," said Mr. Specter, whose proposal passed easily, 73 to 27.

The provision, like many of the other spending increases, was ostensibly paid for, but Mr. Specter readily acknowledged that the plan to pay the new money out of the succeeding year's allocation was a gimmick.

In another spending increase, the Senate unanimously approved $184 million for mine safety. The provision by Senators Robert C. Byrd and John D. Rockefeller IV, both West Virginia Democrats, would be used to hire mine safety inspectors and put in place better mine rescue technologies over five years. It came after a string of mining accidents that left 24 miners dead this year.

The increases in spending took the budget further away from President Bush's original plan. Senate budget writers had stripped some Medicare cuts sought by the president and added other spending before even bringing it to the floor.

Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who joined with Mr. Specter in seeking the increase for health and education, said the vote showed that his Republican colleagues were "recognizing the American people want something different than the president's budget."

The changes also mean that reaching a final budget deal with the House will be difficult, given conservative resistance there to new spending. In a subtle swipe at the Senate, House Republicans circulated a memorandum on Thursday showing how they had been willing to resist efforts to add money for social and domestic security programs to the emergency spending bill.

The administration told Congress that the increase in the statutory debt limit to nearly $9 trillion was needed to avoid a default and keep the government operating. The Senate action will clear the measure for the president's signature since the House had already approved it and Senate Republicans held off Democratic efforts to change the measure and force another House vote.

The increase in the debt limit brought the total increase during the Bush administration to $3 trillion. Democrats said the rising debt was the consequence of what they described as a reckless Republican fiscal policy centered on tax cuts for the affluent.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said Thursday that given Mr. Bush's record, "I really do believe this man will go down as the worst president this country has ever had."

Few Republicans took the floor to defend the debt limit request, and three — Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Conrad Burns of Montana and John Ensign of Nevada — joined all Democrats in opposing the increase.

But Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is chairman of the Finance Committee, attributed most of the growth in the debt to increased domestic security and the costs of natural disasters.

Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee, said it was fitting the Senate would agree to raise the debt limit on the same day it adopted a budget that he said would add substantially to the nation's accumulating red ink over the next five years.

"This thing is larded with debt," Mr. Conrad said.

Ian Urbina contributed reporting for this article.



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Senate Passes $2.8 Trillion 2007 Budget
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer

Congress pushed the ceiling on the national debt to nearly $9 trillion Thursday, and the House and Senate promptly voted for major spending initiatives for the war in Iraq, hurricane relief and education.

The House approved $92 billion in new money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for relief along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast.

The Senate adopted a $2.8 trillion budget blueprint that anticipates deficits greater than $350 billion for both this year and next. The spending blueprint, approved 51-49, little resembles President Bush's proposal last month for the budget year that begins Oct. 1.

To the disappointment of budget hawks, the Senate's measure would break Bush's proposed caps on spending for programs such as education, low-income heating subsidies and health research. All told, senators endorsed more than $16 billion in increases above Bush's proposed $873 billion cap on spending appropriated by Congress each year.

Vice President Dick Cheney was on hand for a possible tie-breaking vote, but that proved unnecessary.

Senators earlier voted 52-48 to send Bush a measure that would allow the government to borrow an additional $781 billion and prevent a first-ever default on Treasury notes.

As a result, the government could pay for the war in Iraq without raising taxes or cutting popular domestic programs.

The budget blueprint advanced without Cheney's vote in the Republican-led Senate when Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu (news, bio, voting record) supported the plan after winning concessions to help her hurricane-damaged state of Louisiana and rest of the Gulf Coast.

She won inclusion of a proposal that could provide up $2 billion a year for levee and coastal restoration projects. The money would come from auctioning television airwaves to wireless companies and from potential oil lease revenues from exploration in an Alaskan wildlife refuge.

Among the specific votes for the budget plan were:

_$3 billion more for heating subsidies for the poor. It passed 51-49.

_$7 billion more for education, health and worker safety accounts. It passed 73-27.

_$3.7 billion more for military personnel costs.

_$1.2 billion more for aviation security and stopping Bush's proposed increase in airline ticket taxes. They advanced by voice vote.

_$1 billion more for benefits for military survivors.

The Senate votes Thursday set up a confrontation with the House, which is certain to oppose the additional spending.

In fact, the Senate's moves appear to make it less likely that Congress will settle on a final budget plan this spring. House Republicans will not release their budget until after next week's congressional recess.

"House conservatives are going to look at this budget and say, 'Whoa, what happened to fiscal conservatism,'" said top Budget Committee Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota.

The votes dismayed deficit hawks such as Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H. He already had decided to drop Bush's proposals to cut the growth of Medicare, strengthen tax-free health savings accounts and advance legislation to make permanent his 2001 tax cuts.

The White House issued a tepid statement supporting the plan despite the numerous setbacks experienced on the floor.

"While the Administration will continue to seek entitlement reforms and the elimination of additional discretionary spending ... we recognize that this is an important first step in the congressional process," said Joshua B. Bolten, director of the White House budget office.

Republicans are eager to show their conservative supporters that they are getting serious about cracking down on spending. Last weekend, GOP presidential aspirants at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis, Tenn., promised to be more thrifty with the people's money.

But GOP moderates such as Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania apparently did not get the message. His amendment to add $7 billion for education, health and labor programs won support from most Republicans, including Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, who has criticized Congress for embarking "down a wayward path of wasteful Washington spending."

"All the talk in Memphis just doesn't comport with the realities of these important items" such as education and health research, Specter said.

The debt limit increase was the fourth of Bush's presidency, totaling $3 trillion. With the budget deficit near record levels, an additional increase in the debt limit almost certainly will be required next year.

Treasury Secretary John Snow applauded Congress for "protecting the full faith and credit of the United States." He said it ensures that the government "can deliver on promises already made, such as Social Security and Medicare payments and aid for the victims of the 2005 hurricanes."

The present limit on the debt is $8.2 trillion.

The increase is an unhappy necessity — the alternative would be a disastrous first-ever default on U.S. obligations — that greatly overshadowed a mostly symbolic, weeklong debate on the GOP's budget resolution.

Democrats blasted the bill, saying it was needed because of fiscal mismanagement by Bush, who came to office when the government was running record surpluses.

"When it comes to deficits, this president owns all the records," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "The three largest deficits in our nation's history have all occurred under this administration's watch."

Unlike last year, when Congress passed a bill trimming $39 billion from the deficit through curbs to Medicaid, Medicare and student loan subsidies, Senate GOP leaders have abandoned plans to cut mandatory programs.



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Senate Passes $2.8 Trillion 2007 Budget
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer

A $2.8 trillion election-year budget blueprint that narrowly passed the Senate forsakes President Bush's tax cuts and Medicare curbs and smashes his cap on spending, disappointing GOP loyalists anxious to see their party stem the flow of federal red ink.

The Senate on Thursday adopted the spending plan on a 51-49 vote, but with little enthusiasm since it anticipates deficits greater than $350 billion for both this year and next.

The measure little resembles Bush's proposal last month for the budget year that begins Oct. 1., and its passage sets up a confrontation with the House, which is certain to oppose the Senate's call for additional spending.

"House conservatives are going to look at this budget and say, 'Whoa, what happened to fiscal conservatism?'" said Sen. Kent Conrad (news, bio, voting record) of North Dakota, the Senate Budget Committee's top Democrat.

Action on the budget plan came hours after Congress pushed the ceiling on the national debt to nearly $9 trillion. The House then promptly approved $92 billion in new money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for relief along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast. The Senate added billions of dollars for education.

To the dismay of budget hawks, the Senate's budget measure would break Bush's proposed caps on spending for programs such as low-income heating subsidies and health research, as well as education. All told, senators endorsed more than $16 billion in increases above Bush's proposed $873 billion cap on spending appropriated by Congress each year.

Vice President Dick Cheney was on hand for a possible tie-breaking vote on the budget. But the spending blueprint advanced without need of Cheney's vote in the Republican-led Senate when Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu (news, bio, voting record) supported the plan after winning concessions to help her hurricane-damaged state of Louisiana and rest of the Gulf Coast.

She won inclusion of a proposal that could provide up $2 billion a year for levee and coastal restoration projects. The money would come from auctioning television airwaves to wireless companies and from potential oil lease revenues from exploration in an Alaskan wildlife refuge.

Among the specific votes to increase spending above Bush's tightfisted budget were:

_$3 billion more for heating subsidies for the poor. It passed 51-49.

_$7 billion more for education, health and worker safety accounts. It passed 73-27.

_$3.7 billion more for military personnel costs.

_$1.2 billion more for aviation security and stopping Bush's proposed increase in airline ticket taxes. They advanced by voice vote.

_$1 billion more for benefits for military survivors.

Given the mood in the House, the Senate's action Thursday appears to make it less likely that Congress will settle on a final budget plan this spring. House Republicans will not release their budget until after next week's congressional recess.

The votes dismayed deficit hawks such as Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H. He already had decided to drop Bush's proposals to cut the growth of Medicare, strengthen tax-free health savings accounts and advance legislation to make permanent his 2001 tax cuts.

The White House issued a tepid statement supporting the plan despite the numerous setbacks experienced on the floor.

"While the administration will continue to seek entitlement reforms and the elimination of additional discretionary spending ... we recognize that this is an important first step in the congressional process," Budget Director Joshua B. Bolten said.

Republicans are eager to show their conservative supporters they are getting serious about cracking down on spending. Last weekend, GOP presidential aspirants at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis, Tenn., promised to be more thrifty.

But GOP moderates such as Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania apparently did not get the message. His amendment to add $7 billion for education, health and labor programs won support from most Republicans, including Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, who has criticized Congress for embarking "down a wayward path of wasteful Washington spending."

"All the talk in Memphis just doesn't comport with the realities of these important items" such as education and health research, Specter said.

The debt limit increase, needed to prevent an unprecedented default on Treasury notes, was the fourth of Bush's presidency, totaling $3 trillion. With the budget deficit near record levels, an additional increase in the debt limit almost certainly will be required next year.

The House avoided an election-year vote on raising the debt limit by automatically sending the bill to the Senate when it passed a budget last year.

Treasury Secretary John Snow applauded Congress for "protecting the full faith and credit of the United States." He said it ensures that the government "can deliver on promises already made, such as Social Security and Medicare payments and aid for the victims of the 2005 hurricanes."

The present limit on the debt is $8.2 trillion.

Democrats blasted the bill, saying it was needed because of fiscal mismanagement by Bush, who came to office when the government was running record surpluses.



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The Democrat's appeal to put some sort of logic and fiscal responsibility into the budget process preceded Feingold's censure motion. Lots of good stuff, but none of it made the news.

Congress Raises Ceiling for Borrowing

By Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray

Congress raised the limit on the federal government's borrowing by $781 billion yesterday, and then lawmakers voted to spend well over $100 billion on the war in Iraq, hurricane relief, education, health care, transportation and heating assistance for the poor without making offsetting budget cuts.

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March 18, 2006
News Analysis
Politics Drives a Senate Spending Spree
By CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON, March 17 — The largess demonstrated by the Senate in padding its budget with billions of dollars in additional spending this week showed that lawmakers are no different from many of their constituents: they don't mind pulling out the charge card when money is tight.

Just hours after opening a new line of credit through an increase in the federal debt limit, the Senate splurged on a bevy of popular programs before approving a spending plan that was as much a political document as an economic one, its fine print geared to the coming elections.

Forced to choose between calls for renewed austerity and demands for more money, many Republicans joined Democrats in reaching deeper into the Treasury, leaving the party's push for new fiscal restraint in tatters.

Some of their colleagues said it was an open-and-shut case of nervous politicians ducking a tough spending stance to avoid starring in negative campaign commercials. Republicans in some of this year's tightest races — Conrad Burns of Montana, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Jim Talent of Missouri and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island — all backed the chief budget-busting provision as they endorsed an extra $7 billion for medical research, education and worker safety.

Lawmakers, analysts and others said the Senate's reluctance to clamp down on spending was a natural result of an approach that fails to recognize a sharply changed reality. In some respects, the administration and Congress act as if the surplus that greeted President Bush when he checked into the White House is still in the bank, rather than recognizing that whatever windfall was available then was eaten up and more by tax cuts.

The reality is that the cuts, plus two wars, new domestic security needs, natural disasters and a big expansion of Medicare have left the government's account badly overdrawn with no prospect of getting it back in balance anytime soon.

The criticisms set out by many Democrats — that no real progress can be made in setting the nation's finances right until Congress proves willing to revisit the tax cuts and that the nation is failing to invest sufficiently in addressing its economic and social ills — do not receive much of a hearing in a Washington where Republicans are in charge.

"I think the critical flaw is the failure to adjust fiscal policy in the face of new circumstances," said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that advocates reducing the deficit through spending cuts and tax increases.

Mr. Bixby and others say the Republican-controlled Congress and the Bush administration have shown a near total disregard for fiscal discipline, running up new debt.

"The problem we have had on the budget all along is a lack of adult supervision on the part of the White House," said Bruce Bartlett, an economist and author of a new book critical of Mr. Bush's economic record. "You can't blame members of Congress for looking out for their parochial interests. It is the president's responsibility to look out for the national interest."

With the president's influence on Capitol Hill slipping along with his poll numbers, it is unclear how much authority Mr. Bush could exert over lawmakers regardless. Senate Republicans showed no hesitation about bursting through the spending ceiling he set, adding more than $16 billion after eliminating some of his cuts.

And while the House, which was considering $92 billion in emergency war spending and hurricane aid, rejected most efforts to increase that total, lawmakers did buy a few extras, including $50 million more for peacekeeping in Darfur.

Almost lost in all the budget and spending activity was that House and Senate negotiators continue to try to hammer out an agreement for new tax cuts that could cost an additional $70 billion over five years.

If Republicans in the Senate were motivated by a political calculation that this was not the time to close the fiscal taps, much less cut more deeply into domestic spending, they risked what some conservatives suggested could be a backlash from the right. Many strategists have warned Republicans that their core conservative supporters are demoralized by what they see as the unchecked growth of government.

John Kasich, a former Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee and devotee of balanced budgets who is now an investment adviser and author, said much of Washington had surrendered to the political impulse to please various voter groups with unbridled spending."

Republican leaders see it a bit differently. They point to nearly $40 billion in savings from social insurance programs they produced last year, an effort that took a tremendous amount of political effort. And an across-the-board cut shaved about $8 billion from current agency budgets.

They say they intend to hold spending for most agencies outside of the military and domestic security under this year's tight limits and will try to erase some of the Senate spending additions in negotiations with the House.

To do so, they will have to get around Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, who clamored for the extra $7 billion. Mr. Specter said that spending constraints had cut too deeply into health and education programs and that there was a strong show of support for the money — a majority of Republicans backed it.

Republicans also say they see a proposed line-item veto and new restrictions on pet projects as part of a rehabilitation program to kick their spending habit. While those initiatives may end some suspect practices, most see the savings as chump change in an era of $350 billion annual deficits and $9 trillion in total debt.

Serious fiscal worriers believe the only true fix can come from a bipartisan meeting of the minds that would put all federal programs on the table along with consideration of both spending cuts and tax increases.

"I've concluded this job is so big it can only be done if the two parties work together," said Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee.

But Mr. Conrad acknowledged that nothing substantive could get done in the short term, with both parties girding for November. As the Senate deliberations show, frugality is not an election-year budget value.



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